Another federal court rules against the NSA
 

Good news for those who care about holding the government to the Constitution. Granted, it will still eventually get to the Supreme Court, and I don't really trust most of the current "conservative" justices very much on civil liberties. I read something from Scalia a while back where he didn't completely give away his opinion but he seemed to think he would decide it based on the word "unreasonable" in the 4th amendment. He kind of hinted he'd rule in favor of the government essentially based on the idea that terrorism is so scary that it's not "unreasonable" to dump the entire country's phone records into the government's possession. It might be hard to find that article, and I'm not a lawyer, but I thought it was pretty weak and crappy reasoning from supposedly a constitutional purist.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-appeals-cou...135802746.html

My colleagues were just talking about the data NSA collects. Our jobs would be pretty easy if they share their data with other agencies.

The Patriot Act expired over the weekend. The House passed a replacement version a while back with some reforms that the Senate didn't want to pass because there are still some influential anti-civil liberties neocons there (John McCain) who wanted to keep the status quo. The Senate may not have the votes to keep the law intact anyway, and even if they did, the House wouldn't pass it now. The House version is much better, but gridlock here is the friend of anyone who opposes the assault on civil liberties.

So sick of McCain, that guy would have us in a dozen wars right now.

I agree. McCain is ridiculous. He never met a conflict he didn't want the US to join or start.